It is a bargain home in the most expensive city in the West – from the outside a neat five-bed terrace house on the market for an astonishingly low price of £285,000.

But behind the apparently normal front of this house in Oldfield Park is something to make every parent wince.

When the owner of the house in Livingstone Road put it on the market, they might have confidently thought it would tick all the right boxes for the estate agent and any prospective buyer.

Five bedrooms, a nice-sized garden and all in a tight0-knit community, it is a stone’s throw from the railway station and less than a mile’s walk from the city centre.

But when Oldfield Park firm Madison Oakley went round to take the requisite photos of the spacious and practical five bedrooms, sitting room, kitchen, utility room and good-sized garden, they found the inside particularly, er, challenging.

For the house is currently a student let – with a contract with five students until the middle of next year. That brings in £1,575 a month in rent, but it also brings a lot of mess when you are taking pictures of the house to try to present it in the best possible light.

The front looks nice enough in picture number one, but things start to go rapidly downhill in picture two. The sitting room looks nicely lived in, with a load of washing hanging on a clothes horse, but the kitchen shows a frightening amount of washing up needing doing.

Once the photographer is into the bedrooms, it becomes quickly obvious that if the students living there did know an estate agent was coming round to take pictures, they have made absolutely no effort whatsoever to tidy up. Or if what is revealed is tidy, then there would be few people who would want to know what it was like before.

In one bedroom, the floor is barely visible beneath a pile of clothes, carrier bags of food, bedding and assorted possessions, in another, a half-eaten sandwich can be seen on a plate on another unmade bed. A third bedroom looks less cluttered, although food containers lie on the bed, and a rapidly browning banana sits next to a ketchup bottle on a chest of drawers.

Just one of the bedrooms, inhabited by a neat student who may study maths judging by the calculator on the desk, would pass the muster of any sort of parental inspection. Or maybe they were the only ones to get the note about the photographer coming round, and forgot to tell the rest.

Estate agent Carey Gilliland said he took the view that it would be better to show exactly what the property was like, rather than leave ‘surprises’ for any prospective buyers.

The state of the place has not put anyone off - there have been eight offers already this week.

“I could have put up no pictures of the inside, but I’d much rather be honest with people and say, look this is what it’s like inside,” he said. “There’s no surprises for people.

“The students have it on a long lease and they are no obligated for any reason to change their lives for us. My particular favourite is the chest of drawers with all the drawers open.

“It’s an investment buy so people should expect that it’s going to be lived in,” he added, “even with underpants on the floor.”

Did the owner warn the students that an estate agent was coming around? He/she needs their permission to enter the property. And has the Chronicle got the permission of the occupants to publish these photos – taken on private property?

Does anyone care about the fact that these students have had their private space plastered all over the internet? This is a poor piece of journalism, and this estate agent should be ashamed of himself for allowing it to happen, not encouraging it by making pathetic comments

Does anyone care about the fact that these students' private space has been plastered all over the internet for them to be humiliated? This is a pathetic piece of journalism and this estate agent should be ashamed of himself for allowing it to happen, not boasting about it and making pathetic comments

There are certainly some messy houses (and gardens) in Bath....no one seems to be bothered about it. There is a house in Weston near the Moravian Church - it looks awful and the long garden which runs down to the church has not been touched in years...full of junk just left to rot. Who is responsible for these properties.......the landlords don't appear to care!!!!!!!

to be fair, I have seen much worse, especially as a student! also messy is better than damp or mouldy ain't it? comment about investors using homes for students when they aren't suitable is spot on as well

The REAL story here is the sad fact that investors are buying up family homes and converting them to multi occupancy to capitilise on the lack of cheap accomadation for students. The landlord has used every room he can to make a bedroom so therefore where are 5 adults supposed to store anything? Double rooms will have a wall put in to make 2 rooms etc.
If Banes allowed the Uni to build or convert buildings into purpose made student accomadation the need for these converted houses would not be there.
I dont blame the landlords for buying and converting homes into multi occupancy ,it makes them money but then neither do i blame the students for leaving these houses in a mess, I actually feel that they are being explotited by greed and a lack of provisions. There has been enough news about students taking up parking spaces,rubbish strewn all about ,noise etc etc,but then what does anyone expect? T
Terraced homes not built for 5 bedrooms all converted in the same location,refuse facilities designed for the average homes waste,no parking facilities because when the homes were built few had cars,noise because the "new" people are a different generation and put into an area that will alienate them from everybody else.